


Drinking to Remember

by Zedrobber



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Angst, Athos is bad with words, F/M, So much angst, mentions of hanging, moping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 08:55:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7970665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zedrobber/pseuds/Zedrobber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A present for Charis for her promotion because she deserves it- she wanted angst and feels and a little hope <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drinking to Remember

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Charis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charis/gifts).



Years later, and Athos stares blearily into the bottom of his bottle, slumped across the table in a tavern he barely knows the name of in a part of Paris he barely ever visits. The wine is cheap.  He doesn’t care- he barely tastes it anyway, swallowing it down mechanically, drowning himself along with his senses. He supposes that at some point he will forget himself entirely.  It will be a relief; he doesn’t much care for what he has become.

 

He could mask it in any of the noble, fine words he knows – duty, honour, friendship – but his heart and his mind know it for the cowardice it is, know that he has been running since the moment he hanged his wife from that tree. So he drinks, and he works, and he ignores his friends’ desperate attempts to reach him, to find something in him they can save. He supposes at some point they will give up, sooner or later.

They ask him about Sylvie, about their child, but he shrugs and drinks and doesn’t tell them that Sylvie left with the boy on her hip and her horse loaded with bags, left him – but not because he was drinking himself into an early grave, (he was), or because he was as poor a father as he was a lover, (he was), or even because his touches were absent-minded and his affection was a pathetic parody of love. (It was.) She left him because he woke every night screaming a name that wasn’t hers, and because he never told her why he still dreamed of a wife he had not seen in years.

Her face is the one memory he cannot drown. Every single inch of her is branded forever onto his heart, agonising and blinding. Even when he forgets his own name, when he can barely lift his bottle to his mouth, he recalls the way her lips curve when she smiles, remembers the pale expanse of her skin, soft and warm under his hands. He hates her and loves her and cries bitter, anguished tears over her memory and of all that he has let slip through his fingers. He wakes with her name on his lips, screaming and clutching for a sword he isn’t wearing to cut the rope that isn’t there.

“You’re back, then.”

Another hallucination. He has imagined this conversation hundreds of times- in taverns, at the garrison, in the middle of busy streets- and it always goes the same way. He drops his head to the cold, comfortingly solid wood of the table and closes his eyes, defeated. “Yes.” He imagines her standing there, beautiful in her fury, dressed like a Queen and with the bearing to match. But his mind offers no retort, none of the usual, biting anger.

He hears only the scraping of a chair being dragged against flagstones, hears the creak of wood and the slosh of wine being poured, and he frowns. This isn’t how it goes. He lifts his head, blearily looking for the rude person who has interrupted his drinking and his dreaming.

 

She looks exhausted. Her hair is dishevelled, her dress one that he remembers from years ago, fraying at the seams though immaculately clean. It is a rich, lavishly made dress, a vibrant, verdant green with black brocade, and he sighs at the predictability of his mind to conjure up only what he remembers. Her hands tremble on her cup, her fingers pale and thin, and he narrows his eyes at her, at this vision who is not quite living up to his usual memory.

Her gaze is the steadiest part of her, her lips pressed tight into a thin line and her eyes hard and icy. She inhales, and he watches in fascination as her chest rises, blinking at her stupidly. She still hasn’t spoken, and Athos is beginning to wonder if he’s just too drunk, if he has finally managed to break this never-ending cycle, when she does.

“You’re disgusting.”

He nods, wearily, draining his bottle. “I know.” So far, so normal.

“Athos.”

“ _ Milady, _ ” he replies bitterly.

The silence stretches taut. He imagines he can smell her, and closes his eyes briefly against the onslaught of memories that pulls up-

 

_ Her smile, sun-warm and sweet, her skin scented like jasmine, grass-stains on her skirts and dandelion seeds in her hair- _

 

He shakes his head. “You’re not real. Stop being her.” But when he opens his eyes, she is still there, frowning in bewilderment that slides into sudden understanding.

“Athos,” she begins again, and his heart stutters frighteningly, her expression and her voice  _ too real _ and too close, and he leans back, eyes darting anywhere but at her, looking for something to hold onto, something that  _ could _ be real, and he’s moaning, “No, no, no,” and shaking because this isn’t familiar anymore, this isn’t the comforting nostalgia he wants, and he tries to stand but his legs fold under him, leaving him helplessly staring into her face from across the table and desperately wishing he were dead.

She watches impassively, and waits. Eventually he gives in to the inevitable truth that she is in fact  _ there _ , and his shaking subsides, leaving him feeling hollowed out and exhausted and not nearly drunk enough to be having this conversation.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, and his voice is barely more than a rough vibration in his throat.

“I  _ was _ working,” she says with an absolutely artificial air of nonchalance.

“For the Queen?”

She hesitates, and her eyes slide away from his for a moment. “No. For myself.”

“You’re not-?“ he says, horrified.

“I have yet to sink far enough to be selling my body in a tavern like this,” she replies viciously, eyeing him. “Look at the clientele. I was- relieving people of their purses.” She looks irritated, still unwilling to meet his eyes, her lips twisted in a snarl that isn’t entirely at him.

“Petty thievery,” he says with disgust.

“And what else would you expect from a thief, a liar and a murderer, my  _ dear _ husband? You said it yourself; I’m merely fulfilling your expectations.” She picks at a loose thread on her dress, rolling it between her fingers.

“Don’t.” Her voice is weary.

 

“Don’t what?”

“Do this. We always do this. I’m tired of it. I- when I saw you, I thought-perhaps you were here to find me.”

 

“I’ve been trying to forget you,” he says without malice, gesturing to the empty bottles on the table. “Unsuccessfully, as it turns out.”

 

She meets his eyes again, finally. “Why are you back in Paris, Athos? Where’s-“

“Don’t,” he echoes her. “Not now.”

 

Her face betrays nothing, but there is an unspoken assumption (a wish) in the air- one that Athos isn’t eager to dispel or confirm- that he really means  _ it’s over _ .

She merely nods, feigning disinterest. “Back with your little gang, I take it?”

 

“Yes.” Why is it always so awkward? Why can they never just have a conversation, why can they not navigate these already charted, sailed and conquered waters successfully? It’s like pushing through a blizzard, time and time again, until they’re shaking and bone-weary and ready to drop with the herculean effort of just  _ speaking _ . His head throbs, his throat rough and dust-scoured, and he groans, defeated. “She left me. Took the child. I’m not fit to be a father.”

“But you think you’re fit to be a Musketeer.”

“That’s all I  _ am _ fit for,” he shrugs, squinting up at her. “You should know yourself I’m not much of a husband.”

“I don’t know,” she says, reflectively. “I thought we did rather well.” She starts, as though she had let slip some terrible secret, and glances to him guiltily. “Before you had me hanged,” she amends, almost hastily.

But of course, now he’s thinking and-

 

_ Her thighs, pale in the sunlight, perfect and creamy and open for him, her lips, soft and warm on his, her arms around his neck, warm and thrumming with life- _

 

“You can’t be a thief,” he says abruptly, not meeting her eyes.

“And who exactly are you to tell me what I can and cannot do?” she retorts, bristling with anger. “You, who rode off into the sunset with your new woman while I stood and watched you go- watched you disappear into your no doubt nauseatingly happy ending while I – I-“ she stops, breathing hard. “I had no  _ choice, _ ” she spits. “I have  _ nothing.” _

 

He considers it, takes the verbal beating from her in silence that is only partially tiredness. He can see her hands shaking on the table, just in the corner of his vision, clenching reflexively into a fist.

Shockingly, he hears her sob, though when he raises his eyes in concern he cannot hide, it is gone, pressed down into her again and locked away tightly. She glares at him.

“You don’t have to have nothing,” he says, reluctantly. She frowns, blinking, her bottom lip still trembling minutely. He has the sudden, overpowering urge to kiss her, and uses every ounce of his will to remain seated, his eyes fixed on her mouth. It takes a huge, painfully physical effort to meet her gaze again, knowing that she is barely holding together some massive, agonising emotion that she is no more equipped to deal with than he is.

 

“What do you mean?” she sighs out. “I’m too bored of these games, Athos. Your silence isn’t as attractive as it once was. Just- please- speak to me as though you don’t hate the very thought of me.”

“Will you do me the same courtesy, or are you incapable of it?” He almost winces when he says it, wants to take those last words back, stuff them back into his mouth and wash them down with more wine, but it’s too late. “Milady-Anne-I-“

She stands, shaking now with fury, and gives him an steel-laced look. “This was a mistake.” She half turns, and stops. “I’m  _ glad _ Sylvie got out before you did to her what you did to me, what you do to everyone, Athos.”

“Anne, wait- please-“ he reaches out, grabs her arm, but she throws him off with seething anger. “Don’t touch me.”

He watches her stalk out of the tavern and is on his feet and following before he’s finished drawing another breath.

He runs, catching up to her easily. The rain is coming down in freezing sheets, slowing her progress through the narrow streets. Silently, he slows to a walk beside her, head down against the rain, and they trudge through the mud for a few minutes before he dares to speak again. “Remember when you kissed me after rain like this,” he offers, risking a sidelong glance to her. “You saw the locket, asked why I still wore it.”

“You said you didn’t know.”

“I lied. I wore it-“ he pauses, reaching into his shirt and pulling something out in his fist- “I wore it because I couldn’t let you go. I couldn’t forget you, even though I tried. I drank until I couldn’t see but I always could see you. It made me remember that- that I deserved everything, all the misery. And that I had loved you.”

He opens his hand, and she sees something glinting, a silver-white streak in the dull light of the evening. “Is that-“

“D’Artagnan kept it for me,” he says, dropping it back onto his chest. “All these years.”

She shakes her head, looking pale and shaken. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Liar.” There is no malice in the word, though, and her lips curve into an almost-smile.

“Coward,” she gives him back, looking at him under her eyelashes.

He huffs out a breath and gives her a heart-stoppingly beautiful smile; for one second it’s like nothing ever happened between them, like it was when everything was easy and everything was a lie.

 

Then it is gone, and all that’s left is the rain sliding down their faces, plastering Athos’ hair to his head and slipping down the back of his doublet like cold fingers, drumming onto the ground and the rooftops and drowning out everything except their own heartbeats.

“Why did you follow me, Athos,” she says as they walk on. “What do we have left?”

“You don’t have to be alone,” he repeats, stubbornly not meeting her eyes, watching instead the way the mud squelches over his boots with each step.

“You’ve said that,” she scowls irritably.

 

“I’m still here,” he mumbles.

 

“Ugh,” she says in disgust. “I suppose you’re going to say you always have been, if I had only reached out-“ she clutches her heart, mocking.

“Perhaps.”

“I doubt that. You threatened to kill me- more than once, do you remember,  _ dear _ husband?”

“I remember.”

They fall silent again, and frustration overwhelms Athos. He isn’t good with romantic words, not like Aramis; he hasn’t got the cheerful, good-natured personality of Porthos or the boyish, charming enthusiasm of D’Artagnan. All he has is bitterness and anger and misery, eating him from the inside. What is that to offer her? Once, he had given her everything. Does he have anything left of him to give, now, after so many years?

 

He grunts, reaching to grasp her arm and pull her to face him, gently enough that she does without resistance. “What are you-“ she gets out before he kisses her, his fingers splayed over her cheek, careful and soft. She tastes of rain, her lips wet with it, and he kisses her all the more gently for it, his breath clouding between them, her hands winding around his neck and her body pressed to his, warm despite the damp. He kisses her like she is his last hope- and perhaps she is; who else knows him like she does, who else has ever loved him like his wife- and when he pulls back, he thinks there might be something he has to give her after all.

 

He offers her his arm with all the gallantry he can muster in this weather, and she takes it with a smile he doesn’t remember seeing for years. A shy smile, one that he had assumed was a fabrication just like everything else. He is pleased to discover it is all natural. The one he offers in return is crooked and self-conscious, but it’s a start.

 


End file.
